


Rest

by Altonym



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:24:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altonym/pseuds/Altonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caradoc journeys to perform needed last rites, in the wake of his bittersweet victory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest

Winter had struck Ferelden hard this year. The farmers he passed, in the tiny homesteads that peppered Ferelden, complained in broad accents toughened by the southerly Korcari winds of the struggling cover crop, the hard ground and icy roads up to Denerim. Some (in the privacy of their homes) even said that the Orlesians had kept them better maintained. These old men felt more at ease talking to an elf, who had no reason for nationalism.  
  
In his youth, Caradoc’s clan had always kept to forest cover, where the thick foliage and evergreen provided a windbreak all year round - exposed to the air, it was cold going. He kept his furs close and wore his battered Dalish scarves to plug the gaps Shem hoods left about the neck – he actually preferred the winter to the summer, all told, but he was also practical. He wouldn’t be venturing that far south, but the mild climate of Amaranthine had softened his skin to the weather. Like with so many things, he had forgotten the truth of it.  
  
Few of his stops were for longer than a night – he was travelling alone, with little except his bow, his quiver and his pack. Rhiannon was a trusty mare, not given for speed but not easily beaten by the cold either. He had no restraints on his time and felt no need to rush. Most villages he paid his way at the tavern, tipped well, and told Dalish stories to the barkeep. Despite himself, he felt the need to give these rural shems a positive story to tell about his people. The couple of times he did run into trouble, a flash of the badge Alistair had given him shut people’s mouths. That and a visible knife.  
  
In a walled town just north of the Brecilian forest he made his first stop. It was a new outpost, built on the back of the post-Blight salvage trade and now a bustling stop-off point for the Brecilian Dalish. Here Caradoc’s people could make trades and move on in short order, to the preference of both parties. A détente of sorts had fallen between the Fereldans and the Dalish, precipitated in no small part by Caradoc himself. It was a bizarre kind of thought to have, really, it felt a bit arrogant, but he supposed it must be true.  
  
A tavern on the south side of the settlement catered more readily to elves, and Caradoc had no interest in justifying his presence somewhere elegant tonight. It had been remarkable just how quickly after being declared a hero he had remembered he was an elf. It was in the sideways looks of a noble at a palace gathering, the hesitance to accept an invitation to the quarters Alistair had reserved for him, the subtle movement of children from his gaze. It had not taken long for Caradoc to remember the velvet texture of the word “shem” in his mouth.  
  
Alistair was oblivious so much of the time, and in some ways he supposed it was endearing; in most other ways, infuriating. He missed Morrigan – her icy disdain for human society, her respect for the magic of the Keepers, her understanding of what it was to prefer a life apart, her observance. He missed his clan, his own. Even the flat-ears distrusted him; it had depressed him, how much they were unlike the Dalish. Caradoc found them difficult to understand, frustrating. He felt like a traitor for not loving them more easily, as he found it easy to love a brother clan.  
  
There was no official alienage here – the population was too small. There was not even a vhenedahl – only a snaking, mud-caked street with a well at one end, where crowded homes sat atop one another. This was where the elves lived, Caradoc was told. In the tavern there were easily four elves to every man, playing dice and drinking. When he entered, he shed his hood and revealed a face half filled with colour. On one side, the blue dominated, the un-tattooed sections describing one half of a outstretched tree. On the other, the gentle yellow lamplight lit sallow, tired skin, emblazoned with a matching blue – the other half of the tree. Together the vallaslin marked him out a Dalish as clear as day. Caradoc had been marked out as a leader, a counsellor, and his face had been coloured in accordingly. There were glances from the elves, a couple, and more from the men. Caradoc took his place and resolved not to talk to any of them.  
  
Later, when the only light was from the sitting space of the tavern, Caradoc walked the length of the street, once again hooded, and sat by the well. He dropped pebbles one-by-one – he missed the sound of water, of natural things. Once he hit the Brecilian he would find a stream and give Rhiannon a rest. He would bathe, as he had so long ago.  
  
“I imagined it might be you.” Her voice came softly; it was elven, he was sure.  
  
He turned and gave a short bow. “Hahren.” She was dressed in her finest, a simple dark green gown with silver threading, bound at the waist by a thick ribbon of mint. Her face was old, as all flat-ears’ faces seemed to be.  
  
“I had heard our…luminary, was visiting. An important occasion. One might imagine you would visit the Hahren.” She cocked her head. It was a rebuke, but gently put.  
“I’m not here as a leader.”  
Her eyebrow went up. “That’s not particularly a choice you get to make.” The Hahren paused, adjusting her complicated headpiece. She went to speak, then stopped. Her face dropped the fight. “You’re on a pilgrimage, then.”  
Caradoc turned, nodded. “To the Brecilian Forest.”  
“And you will say no more.” There was silence. The Hahren sighed. “Of course. Even in a place as quiet as here we hear of your…truculence.”  
There was a long pause between them, and Caradoc shrugged. “The Elvhen would like me to be a grand liberator, an orator on their behalf. I have delivered us another human King, oblivious as the last, and a Queen filled with ambition, who barely finds time to care for _humans_. Why claim a victory in that. Why claim any glory at all?”  
The Hahren paused, then placed her hand over his. They spent a while in each other’s presence, watching the stars settle into their eternal pattern, before the Hero of Ferelden stood to leave. The Hahren had been alive long enough to know there are some wounds difficult to heal.  
  


* * *

  
  
The Brecilian was quieter than he remembered – it took him a day or so to realise how dulled his senses had become to the rhythms of this place. It was in his blood, this ancient forest – reminding himself of its sounds was like remembering the slang of home, it was something intrinsic to coming back here. His clan had rarely trod outside the Brecilian before he left, before they made off for the Free Marches – in many ways, Caradoc could not help but feel like a catalyst for their ruin.  
  
Once the forest traffic died off and he was finally alone, he could exhale. His second stop was the only human settlement he knew of within the Brecilian’s inner reaches – a hamlet in a clearing, really, surrounded by wooden walls and a single watchtower. Watermills powered logging stations, which gave the settlement its limited lifeblood – they exported the wood to bowmakers, furniture-makers, even to the Circle for staves. The whole enclosure smelled of sawdust and moss – in the distance, smoking dens rendered hunter’s meat into a rich, preserved meal.  At the centre of the village was a statue to Andraste, so weathered her face was unrecognisable, merely the suggestion of features on an ancient surface. She could’ve been any god, and Caradoc offered her a bow; her presence was important here regardless.  
  
There was one tavern, no elves as far as he knew. The men here were poorer than the flat-ears, but freer. This place was self-sufficient – it reminded him more of a clan than a settlement. A few wooden structures barely larger than cabins hugged the edges of the open space, worn into the ground over decades. These men had known the Dalish in these parts for many years, and Caradoc greeted them as a wary group of allies.  
  
“I’m on an expedition into the deep forest. Somewhere potentially dangerous, I don’t know, I haven’t been for a long time.” He said it bluntly, to Athelstan, who he knew would not argue.  
“Aye?” The supplier eyed him, and his thick beard quivered with the muscles below.  “You’ll need more torches, maybe some spare bowstring, never enough of that. Don’t know a Dalish who ent got a little bit of bowry in him.”  
“I can make repairs.”  
  
He was handed better tentpoles, a fragrant wood that would keep biting flies away, emergency kindling that could start a fire in a rainstorm, a dagger – “just in case, mind” – a contraption that purified water through a thin slate shard, and finally another cloak. It took repacking, but he left before nightfall, as the call of insects overtook the call of birds and the river fell into a reverent hush, awaiting the display of the distant stars.  
  
The deeper he got into the forest, the more he remembered. The birdcalls of what felt like his youth – though it wasn’t so long ago – returned to him; this one for mating, this one for a predator, this one for a trouble more sinister. Rhiannon was tethered back at the logger’s village. With foliage this thick, Caradoc would move faster on foot. He felt the brush of the overgrown forest floor, the decay-smell; a healthy decay, so much unlike the rot of refuse that built up around cities.  
  
In a moonlit pool his third night out from the lumbermill he bathed without fear, lowered himself gradually into the gentle yet unyielding current of the river. For the first time since he had left Denerim, he allowed himself a breath. His senses moved outward, and he could perceive every part of the performance as both individual strands and as a tapestry. The main note was the wind – Caradoc supposed that would be the tune. The beat was in the river; there was a pattern to the movement of the water, though at first it sounded random. A particular rock blocked the flow, and was struck again and again. The insects were the strings, almost imperceptible alone but together a presence. This kind of hearing had long been robbed of him. Darkspawn made only the crudest sounds, and the clash of battle was savage and simple. Even the voices in his dreams were brutish, robbed of the gentility and glory of Caradoc’s home.  
  
When he had bathed here as a teen it had always been with fear – with a sense of wariness that some creature might come upon him – occasionally them. Not now. Perhaps it was the dark blood that now ran through his veins, perhaps it was the sheer blind idiocy that allowed you to fight an archdemon face-to-face, but Caradoc felt no fear for bears or wolves. The natural predators were not the ones to be afraid of. It was those who disrupted the system, whose presence was a corruption. Besides, he had arrived at a point where there could be no fear – he would die young, in an alien place, fighting alien things. To die at home would be a blessing.

  
For now he had the quiet flow of water, the release of tension in his shoulders, the faint tingling as he pushed water through the crevices of his ears. This should’ve been home – he should’ve spent his life…what had Alistair called it – “frolicking among the trees”? But bloody hell, there was no point in dwelling on that.  
  
Tomorrow he would pack his things and continue to walk. It was all there was.  


* * *

  
  
Caradoc woke with the sun and was moving within twenty minutes. He ate sparingly, bread and water. She had been right, the Hahren – it was a pilgrimage, and required a fast of some kind. The canopy overhead shifted slowly as he walked – from a faded green to a dark cloud that blotted out much of the light. He felt the air warm a little, the bite fleeing from the wind. He was moving closer to the ancient heart of the forest. Here the trees wandered and their faces had voice – they were both here and in the Beyond, had caught fluttering spirits within their outstretched boughs.  
  
He gave his respects at the little wayside shrines established by the Dalish millennia ago. He used his special storm kindling to burn little votives in reverence of those that stirred among the leaves. He could imagine bearded Athelstan growling about knife-ear superstition, but he trusted more in spirits than in fires. This was a pilgrimage, and the respects must be made.  
  
It took him days to reach the cave. This part of the forest was so familiar – he felt a sense of such powerful nostalgia that he would stop frequently to watch the branches sway in the wind far above his head and take in the shifting tones of the forest voice. He had no trouble with wolves – he had not lost the nimble movement of the ranger, the apex predator step. If they arrived, he would enthrall them, and use their scent to keep the others at bay. He had sent great bears against darkspawn before. Part of him wondered if the taint kept the creatures away, afraid of the smell of his blood.  
  
He had imagined it would be more momentous, when he finally arrived at this place – but it was simply a cave. It was not any sense of foreboding that gave him pause a few hundred feet from his destination, but anticipatory pain – he felt his hand quiver constantly despite the mild weather. Whatever darkness had dwelt within that cave was gone. Caradoc repeated this gently to himself, over and over – there is no darkness, there is no darkness. His muscles refused to heed him – he felt like some pet, conditioned to respond regardless of the real threat. He felt taut, stretched over bones too old and large for his body.  
  
By nightfall he had not moved an inch, so he made camp and let sleep consume him.  


* * *

  
  
“Just get in, you coward. It’s warmer than the air!” Tamlen’s face was goading, daring him. Caradoc made a noise in his throat as if to object, but shed his shirt nonetheless, slowly lowering one leg into the water. Its warmth surprised him, and he blinked.  
  
“I told you, didn’t I?” Tam smirked and drifted with the flow, leaving a large space into which Caradoc lowered himself fully. This was their game – Tam forged ahead recklessly; if he was wrong, Caradoc knew how to calm him. If he was right, he led the way, like some flickering light at the back of the next Aravel.  
  
“S’usually cold. I thought you were just trying to fool me.” The solid, sullen tones of Caradoc’s voice were not deliberate – but the rest of the clan liked to name him miserable. Tam was the exception.  
  
“There are these vents upstream.” Tam grinned excitedly – he was like this with everything, with bits of knowledge, with ideas, with action. He bounded about, his face flickering with the pace of his mind – Tam felt things to an extreme, and did not bother holding back. “In the winter you can see the steam rising off this place, the Keeper told me.”  
  
Caradoc blinked. “I don’t like all these new places. Honestly, I don’t know why we came west this year – it’s longer and there are fewer settlements, it seems weird. I think the Keeper’s avoiding something.” His frown was settling into place, so Tam splashed water at him.  
  
“Stop it.” Tam scowled at him. “No misery-ing. It’s not like we can make the clan change direction anyway, so stop worrying about it.” He shrugged and stood to a full height, displacing water, then turned on a heel and dropped backwards, stretching out his arms and landing with a deep _sploosh._ Caradoc watched him gently for a few seconds, then propelled himself through the water to Tam’s side, a smile forming on his face. He threaded his legs sideways underneath Tam’s torso,  and embedded his toes in the shallow riverbed. It was like one of those shem paintings, with mothers leaning over their loved ones, wives over husbands. It was a position of care.  
  
Caradoc leant down to give Tam a kiss. It had none of the reservation of his smile.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
He woke just after dawn, and began packing up his camp to avoid dwelling. Now that he’d met other Wardens, they asked him if he found the nightmares troubling – he always said no, that they did not bother him, and it led to many a self-satisfied conclusion that these things worked differently for elves. Caradoc didn’t bother correcting them. So many of them were children, really, and they didn’t understand how a dream could hurt more than a nightmare. He liked it when the demons overtook his mind – they were a familiar enemy. You could not get drunk on nightmares.  
  
The dreams bled together a lot. They’d bathed together often – it was their time alone, the indulgence the clan gave them. Caradoc could not remember a time when he had expressed concern about their movements – it was the voice of hindsight, he thought. Sometimes they were hunting together. Sometimes they slept. Sometimes it was the sound of his voice, boisterous and playful. It could be anything, really, the tiniest things. Caradoc preferred the nightmares.  
  
There was no trouble reaching the cave this time. His resolve was settled. The burden he kept in his little bag was a dark one, tainted and ruined, and it must be dealt with. The cave was not an easy climb – Duncan had mentioned on their journey to Ostagar how he had collapsed the entry-way. The veil would be thin there, even if no corruption remained. There was no good in making it easy to access. The best thing that could happen would be for wildlife to reclaim the place – tear down the ancient stones, establish nests, give time for the tear between here and the Beyond to heal over with moss and new growth.  
  
Duncan was a shemlen, but he had understood some things all the same.  
  
Caradoc clambered onto the little patch of land outside the cave, just large enough for the task. He took a small shovel from his pack and began digging a hole in a section of the earth that had proper support. He dug for twenty minutes before he was satisfied. From the little bag he took a single bone, from one of Ta- from the ghoul’s fingers, and laid it in the hole. Then he laid a seed in the hole, and covered it over with dirt. Over time, the roots from this tree would give the earth here stability, reinforcing the entire structure of the slope.  
  
He had thought long and hard about which tree to use. Leilana would have liked Andraste’s Grace, but no foreign prophet would save Tamlen now. Morrigan would have had no suggestion – Morrigan would have understood, and told him in the harshest tone to work it out himself. Alistair had looked at him with such discomfort.  
  
In the end, he had chosen silver birch, the most beautiful tree in the forest, distinct and pure and without corruption. His pilgrimage was done, and he could return to his wandering.


End file.
